Thursday, October 20, 2016

Today, October 20th, 2016 at 1:30pm CST, in response to the mass march led by the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), the Honduran police (supported by financing from the United States) unleashed brutal repression including pepper spray, tear gas, water tank and beating with nightclubs. There are many families with children participating in the march and whose health and lives are at risk. The march was called by COPINH to demand justice for its assassinated General Coordinator Berta Caceres, an independent international commission to investigate her assassination, and the immediate cancellation of the concession granted to the DESA corporation to develop the Agua Zarca dam in Rio Blanco, along with all other mining and hydroelectric concessions on Lenca indigenous territory.

Please call:

The U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa at (504) 2236-9320 and ask for the ambassador or his assistant Annie-Marie Lancu or Human Rights officer Jason Smith. Demand they call their Honduran counterparts and ask for an immediate end to the repression.

Your own senator and congressperson to demand they sign on to the Berta Caceres Law for Human Rights in Honduras to immediately cut off military and police funding to Honduras while the assassinations, repression and impunity continue.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

The Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) denounces to the national and internacional public the assassination attempts against the compañeros Tomás Gómez Membreño, General Coordinator of COPINH and Alexander García Sorto, a community leader de Llano Grande, Colomoncagua.

In two distinct circumstances, yesterday on October 9, these two compañeros were subjected to unknown persons arriving on the one hand at the home of compañero Alexander García where they shot numerous times into the principal door and the window of the bedroom where he and his wife and two daughters were sleeping. The shots were made with the intention of assassinating Alexander Garcia along with his family.

On the night of the same day, a person shot at the pickup truck of the organization being driven by compañero Tomás Gómez Membreño, General Coordinator of COPINH, as he left the meeting center of Utopía en route to his house.

The attempt against compañero Alexander García was a second try, since on May 6 of this year, two months after the assassination of our general coordinator Berta Cáceres, he was shot leaving his house by the ex military Enedicto Alvarado, when Alexander was wounded and almost killed. This shooting aggression at his house occurred after the ex military had been processed and his family had made threats against Alexander for not withdrawing the denunciation.

COPINH denounces these assassination attempts against compañero Tomás Gómez, who assumed the general coordination of COPINH after the assassination on March 2 of the compañera Berta Cáceres, and against compañero Alexander García, as attempts to silence the struggle of COPINH against the projects of death in Lenca territories, pushed by this corrupt government that is on its knees before the economic interests at both national and international levels.

Likewise, COPINH denounces the shots fired in the Lenca Community of Rio Blanco, by hit men paid for by DESA, as a form of intimidation and threat against the community for opposing the destruction of the Gualcarque River and the seizure of territories of the Lenca people.

Now 7 months since the assassination of our compañera Berta Cáceres, those who oppose the projects of death such as the Agua Zarca/ DESA dam on the Gualcarque River and the dam by HIDROSIERRA on the Negro River in the municipality of Colomoncagua continue to be targeted. These are attempts to kill those who defend their rights as Lenca people and who strive to build viable alternatives for the development of our communities and of the entire world, and not the development of the pocketbooks of a few.

Now 7 months since the assassination of our general coordinator, neither the government nor the institutions have responded to our demands to cancel the projects the communities were never consulted about, to authorize an independent investigation of the assassination, to demilitarize the Lenca territories and to cease the persecution and stigmatization against COPINH. We demand answers.

We demand the closing of Agua Zarca/DESA and all of the other illegitimate, unconsulted death projects that can be found in our territories.

We demand respect for the lives of all the members of COPINH.

We demand justice surrounding all those who assassinated Berta Cáceres.

Berta did not die, she multiplied.

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Lempira, Mota, Iselaca and Etempica, we raise our voices full of life, justice, dignity, freedom and peace.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

ALERT- Olban
Milla from COPINH’s community radios was detained by the police today around 2:20am
outside of a COPINH building while leaving to meet up with other COPINH members
to go to today’s mobilization in Tegucigalpa in front of the La Granja
Courthouse.While he was since released
without charges, this is yet another example of unfounded and ongoing persecution against COPINH!

COPINH protested in front of the First Circuit Criminal Court
in the La Granja neighborhood of Tegucigalpa today, Thursday September 8th,
at 9am, where a hearing against the ex-Vice minister for the Environment and
Natural Resources (SERNA), Jonathan Laínez, took place for having granted the
environmental permit to the Agua Zarca project in violation of the rights of
the Lenca people to free, prior and informed consultation. We also ask for
attention to the ruling that will be made today in the First Circuit Court of Intibucá
stemming from last Monday’s hearing against the former Mayor of Intibucá
Martiniano Dominguez.

COPINH demands the immediate incarceration of all public officials
who authorized the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project on the sacred Gualcarque River
in open violation of ILO Convention 169 and the rights of the Lenca people.

The case against ex-Vice Minister Lainez is the result of
the complaints filed by our General Coordinator Berta Cáceres with the Special
Prosecutor for Ethnicities and Cultural Patrimony against the officials who
approved dozens and dozens of hydroelectric concessions in Lenca territory in
violation of ILO Convention 169 and the right to free, prior and informed
consent, bypassing the authority and decisions of the Lenca communities,
serving as lackeys for international economic interests and the small group of
elites who govern this country.

The approval of the Agua Zarca Project and other illegal and
illegitimate projects have true campaigns of terror and repression against the
Lenca people for defending the rights of our people and of Mother Earth,
leading to the cruel assassination of our sister Berta Cáceres.So-called “development” has mean
assassinations, aggression and repression against the Lenca people. What kind
of development has to be implemented with the barrel of a gun and indignity?

We demand punishment for all public officials who attack the
Lenca people. We demand as a Lenca people that this justice system start to reflect
that name and act with impartiality in this case. We call for our people’s
rights to be respected and that the justice system respond to the demands of
the Lenca people.

RIVERS AREN’T FOR CORPORATE GREED! CARE AND DEFENSE IS WHAT
THEY NEED!

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Lempira, Mota, Iselaca
and Etempica we raise our voice full of life, justice, freedom, dignity and
peace!

Friday, September 2, 2016

The
Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, 6 months
after the assassination of COPINH’s General Coordinator, hereby states that:

The assassination
of the woman who served as COPINH’s General Coordinator and who was a founding
member of the organization was a crime committed against the entire Lenca people’s
struggle to build autonomy and defend Mother Earth, our shared natural
resources, and our rights as indigenous peoples.

Despite this crime
we re-affirm that we will continue our fierce struggle against the deadly
projects that have been imposed without consultation since the 2009 military
coup d’état. We know that our sister Berta Cáceres Flores has not died as long
as neither her struggle nor her political project, embodied by this
organization, have died.

Our compañera Berta Cáceres, our sister, is
the victim of a State crime, having suffered persecution by Honduran
authorities, security forces and courts and criminalization of her work
throughout her years of political activity, aided and abetted by corporations like
DESA, and international banks like FMO, CABEI and FINNFUND, who want to plunder
our shared natural resources to turn them into their own profit.

Over the 23 years
of our organization’s existence, this
crime has been the biggest blow to our people and it is an attempt to end the
struggle waged by COPINH, which continues to suffer from demonization and
criminalization by the government and national and international corporations
and financial institutions.

Having accompanied
Berta in her struggle, which is our people’s struggle, we are completely clear
that justice will not come from the corrupt and inefficient institutions that
have promoted the extermination of peoples in resistance and that the arrests
they have made do not represent justice for this assassination but are clear
example of the way that impunity is produced in this country.

COPINH continues
to demand the creation of an Independent
Investigation Commission so that we can get to the bottom of this crime, a
demand that has fallen on the government’s deaf ears.

For several years COPINH
has been demanding the expulsion of the
Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project from Lenca territory, where it has been
imposed without consultation, along with the
50 other concessions for dams and wind-power megaprojects that they seek to
impose upon our territory.

The Lenca people
are fighting to live in peace, which is why we demand the de-militarization of our territories, where the
soldiers, police and private security forces exist to secure private investments
by violating the most basic of human rights and sewing fear, terror and death.

Faced with this
assassination, the corporations and banks who finance terror and death should
know that COPINH will be unwavering in its efforts to find those who
participated in this act. May the perpetrators know that we will not rest in
our search for Justice for our sister and that we will denounce each and every
attack we suffer for carrying out our work before the international
authorities.

COPINH knows that
both before and after the 2009 coup d’état the violence and atrocities come
from the interference of the U.S., with its money and its interventions, as
with the coup d’état itself. The imposition of the extractivist model comes as
a result of the U.S. capitalist doctrine and Berta’s assassination is part of a
clear strategy to eliminate by force any form of opposition to that economic
model, which the U.S. is at the heart of.

We denounce the campaigns to criminalize our
organization, financed by DESA on national TV, where they roll out Gloria
López, a person who does not represent Lenca women and is a farce of a
dignified indigenous person and who we are sure is being used by Honduran
businessmen to manipulate public opinion and create more conflict.

COPINH is completely
clear what justice in the face of this enormous loss means: finding who
assassinated her, who gave the order to assassinate her, and denouncing the
criminal power structure that allowed for her assassination. It means that the
work of resistance, of emancipation, of rebellion by COPINH and the Lenca
people remains steadfast. It means tireless struggle against this economic,
political and cultural system that seeks to eliminate our communities, their
ancestral resistance and alternatives to dispossession, exploitation, racism
and exclusion.

Justice is keeping
the memory of Berta’s life alive, the convictions that led her to be the greatest leader of the Lenca people in
the history of the Lenca people’s resistance. Justice is clearly telling the corporations,
the representatives of the state and all of those who enter Lenca territory
that we will not allow the development of any project, action or activity that
rolls over people or that eliminates our voices. It means development by the
communities and NOT by corporations that take advantage of communities,
development based on proposals that stem from our needs.

Six
months after this vile crime the Lenca people continue to cry over this loss
for the Honduran social movement, yet we have not forgotten that her spirit
accompanies us as one more ancestor who has joined us in the millenarian
resistance of the Lenca people. Six months after this
assassination thousands of voices have risen to demand Justice for Berta and to
take up our demands, for which COPINH profoundly thanks the communities, grassroots
social movements and civil society from all regions of the continent and world.
As a people in struggle we know that justice will come only through the efforts
of the grassroots social movement and people of conscience.

Berta didn’t die, she multiplied!

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Lempira, Mota,
Iselaca and Etempica we raise our voices full of life, justice, freedom,
dignity and peace!

Indigenous Lenca activist Berta Cáceres was assassinated this past March 2nd in La Esperanza, Honduras the city in which she was born. From the beginning, her family and COPINH, the organization she served as coordinator, blamed DESA, a company that is building a project of death along the Gualcarque River. Six months later, her daughter Berta, one of the three who has taken up the baton, writes this letter to her mother.

Six months ago I was in a frenzy, travelling from Mexico to Honduras, time moved in slow motion around me. I had to meet up with Laura and Salva, to say goodbye to your hands and eyes.

The news of your assassination came as no surprise. Days before we had been together writing a communiqué to denounce the re-activation of the Agua Zarca project on the other side of the Gualcarque River. We were hoping to stop it by calling out the complicity of the banks providing the financing, with full knowledge that they had no intention to listen and knowing all too well the extent of DESA’s aggression.

I never believed that you were gone, my tears never flowed from the pain of despair, they flowed from indignation at how the world could have allowed your death, at what type of perverse beings had dared to fill your body with bullets, at knowing that you would no longer have your voice.

It scared me how well you had prepared us for this news, the confidence you had that once your voice was gone ours would be here, the thousands of us speaking for you, to continue crying out with your familiar cry: Justice.

The search for justice has taken us on a tortuous path of silence, but also a path full of many arms, hands and hearts that will not allow Berta Cáceres to die with impunity.

Six months later we are indignant that though we continue asking for the participation of an independent investigatory body so that we can discover the truth about the crime committed against you, the dictatorial and coup-continuing government of Juan Orlando Hernández continues to ignore our request.

We are indignant that DESA-Agua Zarca has no intention of stopping the project, that they send out their engineer Elsia Paz to the mainstream media channels in Honduras to “clean up” the company’s image.

We are indignant that banks like FMO have no intention of cutting off financing for this project of death though they always knew what was happening and never cared nor do they care now what we have had to live through because of their colonialist attitude and blood-drenched money.

We are indignant at the ineptitude of Honduran institutions in a case that is a “national priority.”

Over and over again the words to one of your favorite songs flood my heart, “…and though the night settles in, the moon returns, love returns.” That was one of your principles. You lived through every imaginable adversity yet never stopped, always smiling, always filled with satisfaction fighting shoulder to shoulder with your people, building revolutions in your home and in the streets.

And now that is what we do - smile and fight like warriors, never losing hope.

Six months ago I knew that my arms, my hands and my voice were also yours. Six months ago I declared war on death.

In these six months thousands of voices have cried out: “Justice for Berta!”

On that day, March 3rd, I lost you and I gained countless aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters.

We will continue fighting for you, with your values, with your strength, with your joy, without fear: Berta Cáceres cannot be assassinated.

They didn’t kill my mom and the assassins who wanted to kill her screwed themselves because she is here, because she lives in each and every one of us, because as long as we keep on fighting against that killer dam, against the privatization of the forests and the air, we will keep standing up, we will all keep on standing up and that is where my mom will live on, that is where Berta Cáceres will live.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The Civil
Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) calls on
its communities and social movements, organizations and civil society to join
us in the “Justice for Berta NOW” Days of Artistic, Cultural and Spiritual
Mobilization that will take place September 1st-3rd in La Esperanza, Intibucá,
Honduras.

The objective
of this action is to share through mobilization, art and spirituality our cry
for justice for the assassination of our compañera
and sister Berta Cáceres Flores and to continue camping together in actions
to denounce the participation of Honduran institutions, private enterprise and
international banks in this crime.

During this
action we will continue to demand that the state accept an Independent Investigatory
Commission and the immediate and definitive cancellation of the deadly DESA-Agua
Zarca project.

We also call on
the international community to join in this action with public actions that
show support for these demands.

Below is a table of activities:

Day

Time

Activity

Place

Thursday September 1st

3:00pm

Bringing flowers to the grave of our sister Berta.

Cemetery in La Esperanza, Intibucá.

6:30pm

Showing of
documentary about the struggle of Berta Cáceres & COPINH

“Utopía” Convening and Friendship
Center

Friday September 2nd

7:30am

Justice for Berta NOW March

We leave from “La Gruta”

2:00pm

Spiritual
ceremony.

“Utopía”
Convening and Friendship Center

3:30pm

Concert and theater demanding Justice.

“Utopía” Convening and Friendship Center

Saturday September 3rd

9:00am

Forum on the
impact of dams in Lenca communities

“Utopía” Convening
and Friendship Center

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Lempira, Mota,
Iselaca and Ettempica we raise our voices full of life, justice, freedom,
dignity and peace!

COPINH must again denounce the constant threats and intimidation against the Lenca people of the Río Blanco community that is fighting against the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project. In the months since the assassination of our General Coordinator Berta Cáceres, there have been a series of incidents and threats that reflect the Strong climate of violence and repression against members of COPINH who oppose the building of the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project. These incidents are directly linked to members of the DESA corporation and the repressive branches of the State.

We denounce the following:

On July 23rd, 2016, around 6pm, COPINH member Alan García, who was shot by the army during their assassination of his father Tomás García three years ago, was threatened with a firearm when a man came into the community, took out a gun and pointed it at Alan. In recent months, a group of DESA-affiliated hitmen has come to the community of La Tejera, Río Blanco around midnight threatening to burn down the houses of COPINH members while they sleep in them.

Organization members were informed that Jorge Ávila, DESA’s chief of security, has photos of COPINH members in Río Blanco in order to identify and attack them, which is on top of Jorge Ávila telling other people that he is going to look for the houses of certain COPINH members to kill them. We also denounce that a DESA employee threatened to kill Armando Pineda Sánchez, another COPINH member.

We denounce the collusion of the National Police with the DESA corporation to repress COPINH members, especially a member of the National Police who was apparently transferred to the area from the Bajo Aguán. In April, the officer from the National Police beat a member of COPINH, telling him “I am used to killing people. It’s not just one person I’ve killed; I’ve got a whole cemetery. COPINH people are even easier to kill.” Meanwhile, the chief of security for DESA and two DESA security guards looked on and laughed.

In the crop fields that were illegitimately sold to DESA in Río Blanco, threats continue against members of COPINH who are cultivating corn and beans on their ancestral lands. At the end of June, two COPINH members’ fields were sprayed with poison and destroyed. On May 23rd, Aquilino Madrid, who has ties to DESA and a long history of threats against COPINH members who oppose the Agua Zarca Project, pointed a rifle at a group of 25 COPINH members who had showed up to work the land in the Vega del Achotal area. He also threated a minor that he would hurt him if he found him. On June 10th, he showed up armed again at Vega del Achotal. Despite the destruction of the harvests and the threats, the Lenca people continue to cultivate the ancestral lands that were illegitimately seized.

We denounce the attempts to silence those who tell the International community about the reality of the Agua Zarca Project. A few weeks after Rosalina Domínguez and Francisco Javier Sánchez, leaders of the Indigenous Council of Río Blanco, came back from Europe where they had demanded the definitive withdrawal of Banks FMO and FinnFund from the Agua Zarca Project, 4 hooded men were asking for the two of them in Río Blanco at night.

In addition, we denounce an act of intimidation of International press during a visit to Río Blanco. When the journalists travelled to the Gualcarque River by car, they found several tree branches blocking their way, which, despite seeming odd, they removed and continued. After visiting the river, they started heading back but found that someone had but several logs in the road to block their path. Further up the road they again found their way blocked, someone having placed several large rocks in the middle of the road that had not been there hours before. This act of intimidation against the international press is explained by the interests of those who do not want the media to report on the reality of the Agua Zarca Project, a project that has resulted in death and violence.

COPINH calls for national and international solidarity in response to the threats against the Lenca people of Río Blanco organized in opposition to the Agua Zarca Project. We demand the definitive cancellation of this hydroelectric Project and the immediate and definitive withdrawal of all of the Banks financing the Agua Zarca project.

We demand that the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), the FMO and Finn Fund definitively cancel their loans to the Agua Zarca Project. We express our solidarity with the Ngäbe Bugle people of Panamá, who are also defending their territory against anotehr Project financed by the FMO Bank, called the Barro Blanco Hydroelectric Project. We call on FMO and all Banks to stop investing in projects that violate the rights of indigenous peoples, especially the right to free, prior, and informed consent.

In addition, we denounce that the Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, registered on Wall Street in New York, is the Offshore Guarantor for the Agua Zarca Project and therefor also shares responsibility for the human rights violations of the Lenca people since the initiation of this hydroelectric project, including the assassination of our leader Berta Cáceres.

We demand that the Banks immediately cut ties to teh Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project. There have already been too many assassinations of COPINH members defending the Gualcarque River. We don’t want any more threats or assassinations.

COPINH re-affirms the struggle for life and in defense of the Gualcarque River, a sacred driver where the spirit of our Berta lives, along with the spirits of the girls and all of the martyrs of Río Blanco.

We demand the immediate and definitive cancellation of the Agua Zarca Project.

No more repression against COPINH and the Lenca people.

No more people assassinated for defending the Gualcarque River.

La Esperanza, Intibucá, June 27th, 2016

With the ancestral strength of Berta, Iselaca, Etempica and Mota we raise our voices full of Life, Justice, Peace, Dignity and Freedom.

Get Email Updates - Reciba noticias por correo electrónico

News Sources / Fuentes de Noticias

Radio Progreso has radio updates (Spanish only) directly from the from the front-lines of the resistance in Honduras.

Une TV is one of the only independent national TV stations in Honduras

Rights Action has been doing good reporting and commentary as events unfold and has people on the ground monitoring the situation. They are also a reliable vehicle through which to get money to the organizations fighting for the restoration of democracy in Honduras.

Defensores en línea is the best (Spanish-only) online source for regularly updated information on the violation of human rights in Honduras.

Spanish - website of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras about the struggle of the Garifuna people and other resistance and environmental struggles.

School of the Americas Watch has good background information on the coup-plotters training at the Georgia-based School of the Americas / (also known as the School of Assasins) as well as news updates on the coup and a call to action.